Self Protection is our natural right.

Tag Archives: psychology

Hopefully it’ll be useful for someone who’s been a victim or it might save someone from being one. The victims of sociopaths often suffer more from psychological and emotional abuse more than physical, which is what makes this type, the most dangerous for our well-being.

So to begin, one thing to remember is that sociopaths have a tendency to do small insignificant favors for people. Now, these favors are small enough that they don’t have to truly invest anything in them, but they’re big enough for the one they’re doing it for. They won’t ask anything in return. But your brain will register it as something that you “owe” them. Then when the time comes for them to cash in, they will indirectly play the “guilt card” and will get a lot more out of you than they ever invested in you.

So, if you want to spot a sociopath, observe the behaviors of those close to you or of someone whom you suspect to be one.

Focus especially on the ones who are always nice to you and doing little stuff for you, things that you can do yourself, but don’t and so they do it for you without asking anything in return. It might be that they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but let’s face it, not many of those around nowadays, are there…

So, start by seeing what kind of stuff they do for you, then one day, ask them for something big, it should be small enough that it’s doable, but big enough that they’d need to actually invest themselves and their time or money or effort/energy in you. See how they respond.

Most sociopaths in this case, will respond with indirectly saying ‘no’, usually by finding some excuse and try to circumvent around your request. They won’t say ‘no’ directly if you’re still ‘useful’ to them, they don’t want to fall out of your ‘good graces’, so they will create some other way to “help”, a way that won’t involve them investing anything in you, but making you think that they did “help”.

Remember, such individuals are the most cunning when it comes to getting their way. They often hide behind innocence and friendship and kindness, which makes them harder to spot. But if you know where to look and how to see thru the charade, you’ll be able to spot them with relative ease. In which case, the next step would be a bit harder, i.e. cutting such toxic individuals, out of your life.

There’s one other kind as well, btw. The type who will ask you to do small favors for them. This type will twist your mind a different way. Doing favors for someone will mean you investing yourself in them and we always tend to hesitate in breaking off from a relationship that we’ve invested a lot in. This type is the one that people find the most difficult to get away from, as they don’t want to leave a relationship they put their mind, body, soul, money, effort, etc. etc. into. ‘The higher the value of investment, the harder it is to let go’.

The world is a messed up, dangerous place with a lot of different kinds of predators. BUT..if you know what to look out for, it becomes a whole lot safer and you probably will never have to face one throughout your life.

This is a facebook post turned blog post. Hopefully you found it useful. Thanks for reading.

Have you ever listened to the kind of music that makes you wanna get up and dance? How about music that makes you want to do something heroic? How about the kind of music that makes you sad? Nostalgic? Happy? What about the Wonder Woman theme? If you’ve heard it, you know how it kind makes you wanna do something epic. It’s like a motivational music.

Of course, this also applies to different sounds besides music. For example, on a more grim note, during a recent explosion, you could hear people scream in the videos (Emotion of Fear due to explosion and emotions of sadness and sympathy due to the screams when you hear them).

Basically, my point, is that all of those different types of music and sounds provoke different emotional responses. But have you ever asked yourself why? Well, the simple answer to this is that sound is the most important stimulus for virtually any living creature with ears or something similar to ears on this planet. Often even more so than sight. Many animals don’t even rely on sight, sound is their only way of “seeing” (Sonar/Ultra Sound).

You see, sounds, any kind, actually play a huge part in not only how we perceive the world around us, but also largely on our emotional state, on how we feel in that moment. It doesn’t have to be music, I’m talking about sounds. It can be the chirping of a bird or a waterfall or a tiger roaring or an explosion or a fast car driving by. Any sound, affects our thought process, in part of course, it changes the way we feel and think in that moment, about that moment.

Another thing you might’ve noticed is how men with deeper voice usually get more attention while talking, while men with higher voice, don’t as much. It of course depends on what each one is saying and other external factors, etc. But our voice, has an impact. It enhances our personality in people’s eyes. Maybe it could be the deep seated sexism, where high pitched voice of a male is associated with women and therefore weak and not worth listening to? Who knows? But no, it’s not that likely that that’s the case, because it’s the same with women.

Of course, either way, it still proves how voices affect our choices, our moods, our thoughts and even attraction in social settings.

So, how does this relate to everyday life and Conflict Management and Self-Protection? Well, it relates to how we communicate. It relates to what kind of tone we use while speaking. Verbal communication skills are often overlooked in training and verbal deescalation doesn’t just include saying the ‘right thing’, it includes saying it the right way with the right tone of voice. See, having a deep voice is good, but it’s the tone that you speak in, that affects their opinion of you. Certain kinds of tones, that sound too aggressive, too confident, too controlling, too weak, too indifferent, too unsure, basically anything too extreme on either sides, will affect how a person thinks of you.

Sounds, affect thoughts and opinions and those thoughts and opinions will determine how that person treats you. Don’t take the power of your voice, for granted, learn to harness it. Pay attention to the sounds around you, and remember, if you ever feel down, there’s a lot of good music up there that you can listen to and get motivated. Something to think about 🙂

So, do this if you want to know whether you will recall every part of your training in a stressful situation. Give yourself or ask someone else to give you a random series of numbers, single, double, triple digits, for example 4-15-23-39-110-180. Then wait 15 minutes or so and focus on doing something else, it doesn’t matter what, anything that gets your mind off this, that will simulate you going about your day after training. Then do a high intensity workout, this will simulate your tiredness after a work day. Focus on the workout only, nothing else. Do it for at least 30-45 minutes. Then towards the end of the workout and after it, try and recall the sequence that was given to you, and then recall it in reverse. If you can do that flawlessly, meaning you don’t write it down or constantly think about it and stress on it and still be able to recall them within 10-15 seconds, chances are good that you’ll be able to recall a lot of information accurately in very less time during a stressed situation. If you don’t, which most can’t, you should try making your training more principle based rather than technique based. Because there is no way you can ever recall every technique you learned for every different situation within the time frame that will be provided in an actual stress based situation. I used to do that all the time and still do it sometimes, it’s useful in improving memory as well btw.

Update- Just to be clear, I’m aware that physical recollection memory differs from pattern recognition memory. My point with this is to show that the more data you have to recall, the longer it takes and the efficiency of memory recollection drops, as in, the data recalled is either inaccurate or incomplete. It is much quicker for the brain to recall a generalization than a specific bit of information.

Try it! Find out how well your memory recollection works in a stressful situation 🙂

One of the most effective ways to cultivate psychological resistance to your environment is detachment from the factors causing stress.

This is applicable to those who can’t escape their harsh, stressful environments.

Before doing something like that, remember three things though;
1- It’s easier said than done. Takes a lot of forceful avoidance (will).

2- There are extreme side-effects like anti-social behavior, lack of social skills, anxiety, depression, emotional imbalance and loss of empathy, with prolonged application.

3- If not kept in check, i.e. if you constantly keep detaching yourself from everything you ‘don’t like’, you will alter your brain in a way that even the smallest things will cause you to lash out or you will become completely desensitized to all stimuli, including any emotion of joy. It’s only truly useful for those extreme stress situations, not your day-to-day issues.

Regulation of emotions is a really helpful skill to have in social as well as asocial situations, not to mention in social interactions, so as to not say something in the heat of the moment that might destroy relationships.

So, I was reading an article about an incident, then moved on to comments and saw many people just recommending many different opinions than what was stated.

Then while I was in the shower, mid shower, it made me think up a question and a possible answer to it.

So, here it is;

Did you know that words can expand and contract?

Yes, you read that right. Words, before becoming words, are thoughts, and usually after becoming words are actions.

Remember the term “It’s easier said than done”? Well, it’s because when those words are thoughts. they’re contracted in our head, but expand exponentially when materialized.

Let’s take an example here; “I will climb mount Everest”. Now, think this sentence in your mind. Now see yourself on top of that mountain. Just standing at 29,000 ft. How easy it was to do that, easy enough, right? No doubts about just thinking of you doing it.

Now say the same thing out loud, and ask yourself if you truly believe that you’ll do it. The task, now that you have said it out loud seems more out of reach than you thought it, correct? Bordering on ridiculous.

That’s what i mean when I say that words can expand and contract. This happens because the more effort you have to put in, the harder the task will be to accomplish.

Since thinking and imagining you doing something doesn’t require much physical or psychological effort it is the easiest task, but when you start saying it, you require more effort than thinking, it will require more processing power of your brain, more physical power of your mouth, etc etc. so now it will start to seem harder to you, now moving on to doing it, well, it will put tremendous stress on your body and mind, as a result, the task, by the time you go from thinking to doing it, will seem nigh impossible, as it has expanded to something much more than an abstract concept.

This would explain the behavior of many armchair quarterbacks and back seat drivers. Thinking is easy (for some), but doing it, putting it into action is a whole another thing.

This would also explain many people who judge other people’s actions in an assault or a police arrest situation. “Oh why did he have to do that, that was unnecessary”. In their minds, it’s an easy task to not injure, kill, etc and still come out unscathed. Because the words are easily said, without knowing the context, full story, etc. It doesn’t require much effort, just like the thought process of an average individual. Thoughts pop up, words are said, but when it comes the time to act on them, virtually no one will do what they said.